I want you to know that I am taking this segment on Uranus seriously and have been working on it, but have been thinking and reflecting about it more so than writing at this point. I am hoping to now create enough time to get some significant writing done, as I sense there is an extraordinary amount of material to cover about Darwin's Uranus- I am hoping to at least capture some of it. I hope I can have something posted by this upcoming Sunday.

In Evolutionary Astrology Uranus correlates with long term Soul memories, like an individuated unconscious, that wind up conditioning consciousness, including conscious behaviors and thoughts. These long term Soul memories can include trauma, not only personal trauma but shared group trauma, both of which apply to the Soul incarnated as Charles Darwin. With a Uranus in Scorpio, part of the Soul trauma carried by Darwin would involve betrayal from relationships and in the 11th house this could be extended into groups, organizations, and society. The Scorpio 11th House combination could also involve him having desire to cross taboo boundary lines of society yet fear rejection, punishment, or exile if actualizing aspects of his true nature that cross societal taboo lines. Uranus in Scorpio could also relate to power struggles and issues, such as being on the receiving end of abuse, being the abuser, or developing a relational complex of imbalanced assertion of will because of a fear or expectation of a power struggle. Uranus in Scorpio would carry and process this Soul trauma in the emotional body, and with the additional 11th house influence Darwin would be able to utilize times of depression to detach and ultimately break free from such past Soul conditioning. Uranus in Scorpio would also carry an ability for in depth emotional processing and understanding that could enable Darwin to penetrate to the core of the reasons behind why he had become conditioned in the manner that he had.

Significantly, Uranus also correlates to what Jeff Green called the “freedom from the known,” a liberating dynamic that can help break a Soul free from inhibitions that have held back its evolution. With a Scorpio Uranus conjunct the North Node of the Moon in the 11th House, Uranus carries a strong liberating force in the chart of Charles Darwin, as it has numerous significant aspects including a trine to the Mercury-Ceres-Pluto conjunction in Pisces in Darwin’s third house. As a result, Darwin had the opportunity in his lifetime to integrate the deep learning linked to his strong Soul history of desire to name and classify aspects of phenomenal reality while accumulating vast amounts of knowledge (Mercury balsamic conjunct Pluto in third house) in order to find ultimate meaning in the form of the unity found within Nature (Mercury-Ceres-Pluto conjunct in Pisces). The liberating impact of his Scorpio Uranus on his North Node of the Moon evolutionary development would therefore coincide with the evolution toward his Pluto polarity point of Virgo in the 9th House, which included a meaning of his evolutionary purpose being linked to his work in the world that would structure all of his vast observations and knowledge into a unifying theory expressing an ultimate truth regarding nature and phenomenal reality. As a result, his Scorpio Uranus is a very important dynamic in his development of evolutionary theory and the “Origin of Species.”

We can see this in part through breaking down the trine aspects between Scorpio Uranus in the 11th House and all of the Pisces in his third house. First, the Scorpio in the 11th House indicates a lesson of learning to merge with others and other systems of knowledge into society and culture in order to help liberate others from inhibiting conditioning factors, for example in Darwin’s case this would include helping to liberate others from religious conditioning concerning Creation. Pisces Mercury being in an almost exact first quarter trine to Scorpio Uranus exemplifies his ingenious mind that was capable of intense insights penetrating to the core of phenomenal reality, at times through his emotional body and intuition in a way that stands in contrast to the stereotype of an overly rational scientist- yet with Scorpio Uranus in a disseminating trine to his Pisces Pluto, Darwin was meant to figure out how to communicate these insights this lifetime into a form that would be accepted and understood by the general public in the society and culture of his birth (as we have discussed, there are many factors in his chart assisting him in this purpose such as his Libra Mars in his 10th House and his Capricorn Moon in his 2nd House).

With an Aquarius Chiron in his 2nd House in square to his lunar nodes, it means in Evolutionary Astrology that Darwin has a skipped step of having been on both sides of this nodal polarity in past lifetimes, both on the Scorpio 11th House side and the Taurus 5th House side. His Aquarius Chiron is ruled by his Scorpio Uranus, as well as being in a first quarter square to his Scorpio Uranus, and so his Scorpio Uranus is a key factor in this past Soul pattern that is unresolved and includes the impact of the correlation Uranus has with shared trauma on Darwin’s mind and its connection to his body, and ability to securely live and express himself from his authentic inner values. His Taurus South Node in the 5th House, ruled by an Aries Venus at the end of his 3rd House and conjunct his IC, correlates to his Soul history of isolating away from society in order to pursue his Soul desire and sense of having a special destiny to complete that included collecting as much observation and knowledge as possible from his personal environment as well as through exploration of other geographic locations and cultures, such as in the past life as the sea explorer William Dampier. Darwin’s Soul memories and patterns involve a lot of self-reliance, also shown through him having a South Node of Uranus in Sagitarius in his 1st House, as a coping mechanism for deep Soul memories of experiencing extreme trauma as a consequence of having merged with another loved one or relationship, a group of like-minded individuals, or an outside source of power. As a result, with a Scorpio Uranus conjunct a Scorpio North Node of the Moon in the 11th house, and a North Node of Uranus in Gemini in his 7th House conjunct Black Moon Lilith, despite triggers of unconscious and conscious trauma Darwin would be called to go back into or persist through feelings of trauma in order to leave self-isolation and integrate into society, risking betrayal and rejection by merging his being with others in society, forming intimate relationships, and creating collaborative friendships and working relationships with others in social groups and organizations. Since the ruler of his Taurus South Node is an Aries Venus (end of 3rd House conjunct IC) that is gibbous inconjunct his Scorpio Uranus, Darwin’s experience of this trauma could be jarring and shattering to his emotional body, but ultimately a necessary crisis to persevere through and problem solve in order to make the necessary internal adjustments that would allow him to complete his sense of a special destiny in scientific theory. Thus his Aries Venus would help him serve the needs of society instead of his own purely selfish needs.

As we have already discussed how his Capricorn Moon in his 2nd House gave him a moment-to-moment assistance in how to navigate successfully through societal norms and responsibilities in order to facilitate his integration into society, it is also important to reflect upon the fact his Capricorn Moon is in a crescent quintile aspect to his Scorpio Uranus. As his Scorpio Uranus is conjunct his North Node of the Moon and part of his evolutionary purpose, this Capricorn Moon quintile gave him the ability to internally individualize his evolutionary purpose despite the inherent nature of a crescent phase aspect that can involve fighting off the “ghosts of the past.” Thus the type of shattering events that could be associated with his Scorpio Uranus, including traumatic ones, in the end could have led to a creatively transforming process in which Darwin could internally integrate his new purpose in order to ultimately express it into society through external action and events. So even his times of great depression, which at times could be directly connected to utterly heart breaking events such as the death of both his own mother and his own beloved daughter, could in the end have led him to internally question and break free from limiting conditioning on his thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that were at the same time also connected to his deep Soul memories, including unconscious traumatic memories. However, this could be an extremely debilitating and difficult experience for Darwin at points in his life, giving a feeling that he may not even be able to pull through to the other side of his despair, and is one of the reasons why Darwin appeared depressive and melancholic to others at times, and also had a tendency to stress and tax his being into illness.

This same capacity of Darwin’s to individualize his evolutionary purpose aligns with him being in the third individuated stage, as well as the fact that he had a Pluto in Pisces that could resist the Pisces desire to merge with Source at times through obsessively focusing on individualizing characteristics that would give him a clearer sense of an individuated identity. Thus, even though having not only a Pluto, but also a Mercury, Ceres, Juno, and Jupiter would all align with desire to merge with Source, including a Soul history of having done so, at the same time there would be an attraction to this merging there would also be a repulsion to it, eventually leading to some sort of crisis or implosion that would reveal to himself his resistance to merge. Having all of this Pisces, including his Pluto, also in his 3rd House also involve an attraction/repulsion dynamic that would lead to cyclic implosions through which he would become aware of any limitations or stagnation in his intellectual understanding and organization of phenomenal reality. With the Pluto Pisces signature, he would at times have been obsessively fixated on some of these intellectual identities in order to give himself a sense of an identity separate from Source- and in this process it would often be events correlating with his Scorpio Uranus in his 11th house conjunct his North Node of the Moon that would create implosions and shattering moments of epiphany concerning identities and intellectual frameworks he would need to liberate from. We can see this in the lifetime of Charles Darwin through the numerous intellectual identities he took on at a young age and then discarded completely, for example being a medical student as well as pursuing religious studies to join the clergy. The fact Darwin somehow managed to figure out how to get on board a ship sailing back to some of the same geographic locations that William Dampier also traveled to and recorded observations about is an example of how the deep Soul memories of his Scorpio Uranus managed to guide Darwin at times, no matter how unconscious he was of them.

Yet, while the trine between his Scorpio Uranus and his Mercury-Ceres-Pluto in Pisces gave him an opportunity to integrate his deep Soul memories into his work in the world, the first quarter sesquiquadrate aspect between his Pisces Jupiter in his third house and his Scorpio Uranus meant that the revealing of these deep Soul memories could coincide with humiliating events and experiences meant to force Darwin to re-adjust and transform his past Soul desires that were overly willful and self-absorbed into patterns and intentions that were aligned to a much greater extent with the actual needs of his society. For example, as Rad has identified the sea explorer William Dampier as being one of the past identities of this Soul, we can see in Dampier the personality of a willful pirate and explorer who was ultimately out for himself, choosing to isolate himself away from society on the high sea, and even come into conflict with the law of society through accusations of cruelty against members of his own sailing crew. In other past lifetimes this Soul would have had other experiences of self-absorbed pursuits of personal desire with little consideration for the needs of the surrounding society, and so in the lifetime of Charles Darwin he was meant to re-shape the willfulness of his Aries Venus ruling his South Node of the Moon in Taurus into greater awareness of the needs of the whole surrounding community. While Darwin retained his competitive Aries Venus fire of wanting to be the figurehead of a groundbreaking evolutionary theory, through humbling and humiliating experiences correlating with his Scorpio Uranus, his Pisces Jupiter (3rd House) ability to construct a theory of ultimate understanding out of his direct experiences and observations in phenomenal reality could be re-focused at times on serving the needs of society and his social environment to a greater extent. Whenever Darwin faced obstacles or resistance to the implementation of his purpose and work in society, his Pisces Jupiter in sesquiquadrate to his Scorpio Uranus could make use of his difficulties through ultimately making his intellectual framework a more pragmatic benefit to society.

Analyzing the South Node of Darwin’s Uranus in Sagitarius in his 1st House will help us get a stronger sense for the past Soul memories that correlate with his natal Uranus in Scorpio. Darwin’s South Node of Uranus is closely conjunct the asteroid Kassandra, and is more widely conjunct the South Node of Mars, all in his 1st House. Being in Sagitarius in his 1st house while also being conjunct the South Node of his Mars, we can see further signs here of Soul memories of having a strong instinctual and willful nature that would want to pursue and take action on its own desires more so than in consideration of the needs of others or society. This is further shown through Darwin’s South Node of Sagitarius being in trine to his Aries Venus, the ruler of his South Node of Taurus in his 5th House. Since the South Node of Darwin’s Uranus is in square to all of his Pisces in his third house (Mercury, Ceres, Pluto, Juno, and Jupiter), we can see that in his lifetime as Charles Darwin he was meant to take this past self-absorbed and willful nature and enter in communication and debate with others, come into contact with other cultures and other worldviews, and learn how to focus his evolutionary purpose through his work in a way that would help him meet the needs of society to a much greater extent. With Pisces Juno as part of this square we can even see how his intellectual debates and discussions with his wife could be part of this evolutionary purpose, but on a larger scale the enormous magnitude of intellectual debate stirred up by Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the innumerable individual arguments and intense discussions Darwin would have had with countless intellectual peers and other members of society on his path toward developing his groundbreaking theory would all have correlated with the meaning of his Pisces third house stellium squaring the South Node of his Uranus. Since the asteroid Kassandra is conjunct his South Node of Uranus, it also brings in the meaning from the Kassandra myth that Darwin would carry soul memories of having important information to share with his society in past lives, but would have lacked the ability to make others listen to him or take his advice, guidance, or knowledge seriously. In this way, the square to Kassandra and his South Node of Uranus from all of his Pisces in his 3rd House (Mercury, Ceres, Pluto, Juno, Jupiter) would correlate with his obsessive desire to exhaustively support his intellectual theory with detailed and copious research that would be so convincing that he would have to have his ideas taken seriously by society. His additional compulsion to make sure he was ultimately seen as the progenitor of biological evolutionary theory correlates with the South Node of his Uranus being in trine to his Aries Venus, the ruler of his South Node of Taurus in his 5th House- here we can see his deep Soul memories of willfully pursuing a sense of his own special destiny expressed through his Aries Venus exploration of scientific observation and study, intellectual understanding, and communication into wider society. However, with the other aspects to his Aries Venus such as it being inconjunct his Scorpio Uranus and in sextile to his North Node of Uranus in his 7th House, his willful Aries Venus would ultimately focus on serving the greater needs of the world.

Another significant aspect to Darwin’s South Node of Uranus is even more important when we look at his North Node of Uranus- the true node of Black Moon Lilith. Black Moon Lilith is opposite Darwin’s South Node of Uranus, and new phase conjunct his North Node of Uranus. This is another sign of trauma in connection to the deep Uranian Soul memories of Darwin, a feeling of having been rejected and possibly exiled. Part of the willful nature of Darwin’s past Soul memories seen through the South Node of his Uranus, can be understood through the opposition of Black Moon Lilith- perhaps out of a feeling of having been rejected or misunderstood, the Soul of Darwin developed a mistrust of society and ultimately lost a sense of care or compassion for the greater needs of society, seeing society as more of a threat or something to resist or fight against. However, as the evolutionary direction of Darwin’s Uranus, his North Node of Uranus, is conjunct the true node of Black Moon Lilith, it means that the resolution for this past trauma is to risk betrayal or rejection of society and relationships with a wide variety of people in society, through integrating himself into society while articulating and communicating his message and intellectual understanding exemplified by his incredible stellium of planets in his third house. In the work of astrologer Demetra George, Black Moon Lilith is the “resolution” phase of the Lilith archetype involving transmutation and transformation of past wounds in a process similar to the dark moon phase of the Moon. This is a process of creation through destruction, and linked to the North Node of Uranus means a healing of past Soul wounds and trauma through the cutting away of false needs and delusions that are not authentic. This means the evolutionary trajectory of Darwin’s Scorpio Uranus called for him to step into relationships with the world through his own integrity, expressing his true authentic nature without a need to manipulate acceptance or security from others, or isolate his true nature away from others for fear of rejection. A Dark Goddess, experiences correlating with Black Moon Lilith being conjunct Darwin’s North Node of Uranus could have taken him into his own inner darkness and depression, but the “why” behind this was for Darwin to uncover personal delusions and illusions, places where he may have been clinging to false needs or denying his true needs, in the end learning to integrate his Soul purpose into relationships with others while expressing his own needs and listening to the needs of others. Connected to this could be his own personal connection or experience with Source or God, including his sense of what it means to merge with Source, in comparison to the dominant societal perspective on God and religious thought- especially since Darwin’s North Node of Uranus is square to Virgo Lucifer in his 9th House and is in a wide opposition to his Sagitarius Neptune and Saturn in his 12th House. The Virgo Lucifer square in particular could make Darwin’s Uranus evolution to his North Node of Uranus in Gemini in his 7th House contain a lot of self-doubt and guilt, blaming himself for not being good enough or questioning his own beliefs and perceptions as not good enough- in particular with Virgo Lucifer also square his Gemini Black Moon Lilith. Just as he at one point confessed to a colleague that developing his intellectual theories felt like “confessing to a murder,” so would the implications of his theories on consensus religious thought and ideas of God also create inner doubt and guilt at times in Darwin. Yet with his Sagitarius Neptune balsamic conjunct Saturn in his 12th House in opposition to his North Node of Uranus and in square to his Virgo Lucifer, part of his evolutionary journey with Uranus was to clear out his own Soul history of religious conditioning and to shift his Virgo Lucifer to the “bearer of light” aspect (in particular as his Virgo Lucifer is at the polarity point of his Pisces Pluto) to a belief in himself that he can have the perceptions concerning Nature and Creation that he had, to believe in himself and seek solutions to his problems instead of having 7th House types of confrontations lead him into guilt, blame, and giving up. Of course, as we have previously discussed an additional aid in him breaking free of past conditioning would be his soul purpose of an Aquarius Sun conjunct Pallas Athena that is ruled by his Scorpio Uranus.

The Aquarius Chiron of Darwin is significant not only as his skipped step, but also as a facilitator of this nodal axis of his Uranus. Although his Aquarius Chiron is square to his natal Uranus, and resolving toward the conjunction of his North Node of the Moon conjunct Uranus in Scorpio, there are harmonious aspects between his South Node and Noth Node of Uranus with Chiron- his South Node of Uranus is in sextile to his Aquarius Chiron, and his North Node of Uranus is in trine to his Aquarius Chiron. As a result, the “wounded healer” aspect of Chiron is in full effect in Darwin’s chart, with his Aquarius Chiron stirring up wounds with his Scorpio Uranus while at the same time activating the “liberator” aspect of Uranus through giving the opportunity to facilitate an integration of his deep Uranus Soul memories through the sextile to the South Node of Uranus and the trine to the North Nod of Uranus. His Aquarius Chiron in his second house at its “highest” level could help process the Soul trauma stirred up through various events and experiences in his life, to help Darwin persist through to the lessons of relationship and integration into society shown through his North Node of Uranus in Gemini in his 7th House and Scorpio Uranus conjunct his North Node of the Moon in his 11th House. Thus some of the devastating trauma Darwin experienced in his lifetime, such as the death of his mother and daughter, would be shocks to such a great extent that it would force him in an Aquarian way to ultimately come to more of a detached analysis of his beliefs and inner values and perceptions, in order to help him cope with his emotional reactions and depression. In this way he could use the detached nature of his Aquarius Chiron to help heal the connection between his mind and body- in past lives and his Soul history, the detached aspect shown by Aquarius Chiron as a skipped step could have made his mind so detached, and wrapped up in his own selfish and willful pursuits we have also discussed, that he could have developed and acted from values and beliefs that did not take into account the needs of his environment and society and ultimately created great guilt his Soul would carry forward into subsequent incarnations. The willful focus on a special destiny aspect of his Soul history, shown through a 2nd House Aquarius Chiron, also could have been about an intense focus on his own survival needs at the cost of the needs of others. As a result, all of the many conflicts and shocks that Charles Darwin experienced in his lifetime correlating in part through his Scorpio Uranus in a first quarter square to Aquarius Chiron, ultimately would have forced him to take into account the needs of others while at the same time he learned to manage triggering feelings of trauma enough to persist through into integrating his inventive ideas and theories into society in a manner that would help meet the needs of society and help others break free of their own limiting conditioning of belief and mind. With this first quarter square aspect, the form Darwin created aligned with the heroic mentor and healer aspect of Chiron, in the way in which Darwin’s evolutionary theories and observational work in science was attuned to the medicine contained in every aspect of his surrounding natural environment, drawing upon the observational power of Aquarius to note and record variations in species and environment and analyze in an Aquarian manner the reasons “why.”. Darwin also grew into a mentor type of figure for other scientists, researchers, philosophers, and intellectuals who wanted to break free of the confines of past conditioned thought.

Most of it's done but it has been busy as usual, and have become very tired recently, so will have rest for a day and continue after that. Sorry I didn't quite make it by the end of the week. But I'll be posting in a couple of days, 3 at the most.

The Soul exists very deeply within us, and generally speaking most of us simply do not have any waking awareness of our Soul. This prompted Gurdjieff, a mystic who was born about 16 years before Darwin died, to always say that a person isn’t born with a Soul, that they only have a Soul once they have created it by working to develop more awareness of themselves. However this is not true, and no doubt Gurdjieff knew it wasn’t. But the point still stands … if no-one is ever there to see or hear a certain tree in a faraway forest falling, or see it fallen, does the tree actually fall at all? If we have no awareness of anything like a “Soul” in us, do we actually have a Soul? Well, putting the question of the tree aside, as far as the Soul is concerned, then fortunately yes - we do.

But what is the Soul? In a most simplistic allegory each Soul is a tiny piece of the “Source”, a tiny piece of “All That Is”. And the Source of everything obviously has consciousness itself because there is consciousness in the universe, in the creation. And the Source must be immutable, indestructible, as there can be nothing to destroy it. And so the Soul, being a part of the Source, in essence is an indestructible consciousness. Additionally each Soul has an innate uniqueness - imbibes a unique flavour of the Source (for lack of a better expression) - giving each Soul consciousness an individual “identity”.

The Soul exists at the most unconscious level of our being, and within the Soul are desires. Many desires to try and move away from the Source (of which the Soul is a “tiny part”) and thus appear “separate”; and a core desire to merge back into the Source, so that any sense of separation is dissolved completely. Evolution of the Soul (Pluto) involves exhausting all these separating desires, and then finally fulfilling the remaining core desire to return to the Source, to merge back into it. On Earth this is accomplished by the Soul constantly incarnating into a human body, and selecting certain desires to be fulfilled in each life according to the Soul’s intentions for that life regarding the exhausting of all desires. The desires that are selected are then held in our being in blueprint form at an individually unconscious level (Uranus) – waiting to unfold in our future. Over time as required by the Soul, these desires are released from this unconscious level into our primitive, instinctive awareness (Mars).

A cognizant centre exists within our being which consciously registers these desires as they are released through Mars. This centre, which we call “I”, has two parts. The Sun is the yang and fully conscious part of this centre. With its beaming vitality the Sun is the most conscious part of our being, directing our actions according to our perceptions and situation. However if the Sun is weakened at any point our confidence can become easily diminished to the same extent, and if it stops functioning our very life becomes threatened. Our Sun operates in the present on an on-going basis, and is therefore relatively very constant (“I am”). This gives us a certain individualistic sense of ourselves, although it is not necessarily subjective.

The Moon is the yin and semi-conscious part of this centre we call “I”. Because life is an energised series of events (both externally and internally) this is constantly producing change. It is on a semi-conscious level via our feelings and emotions that we process this constant change, and so our feelings and emotions (Venus/Moon) are likewise always changing according to our circumstances - thus this part of our being is always very personal and subjective. Sitting below these changing feelings and emotions however is an emotionally-based image of our self that we can internally “see/feel”, which creates a sense of our self that we instinctively try to keep as constant as possible (Moon). As well as our outer am-ness we need this consistent inner Moon based sense of who we are (our ego), regardless of what other changes might be going on in us, or around us externally, because without having any inner sense of who we are to a greater or lesser extent most of us would be stranded in a sea of swirling emotion, making us really uneasy and very, very insecure. This centre of our consciousness with both its parts gives us an everyday identity, which reflects the much deeper identity of the Soul itself.

Generally we feel safe if our inner image of ourselves, our ego, isn’t impacted by events so drastically that it is disrupted or invalidated. It doesn’t change if the feelings arising within move in a steady flow through us, allowing us to gradually modify our self-image in tune with the changes in our life. But if one or more feelings become uncomfortable to the extent its flow slows significantly or stops altogether, a build-up of emotion then occurs and depending on our consciousness, this may force our self-image to have to change in a stressful way.

Another reason that it is at a semi-conscious Moon level that consistency is so important to us, is that it is here that we experience the constantly shifting point of tension between our entire known past and our total unknown future in every moment. Generally, we simply do not have enough consciousness to feel secure at this huge juncture inside us, without something relatively “solid” inside us to relate to, and that is what our self-image provides us with. Therefore as each moment is happening it is through the Moon that we feel inwardly anchored, and thus stable overall.

As each desire selected for the current life is released from our unconscious (Uranus) activating our instincts (Mars), the Sun registers it and then creates a relevant purpose in our current life situation (whatever that may be at the time) for this desire, so that it can be integrated into our life. As we consciously integrate a new desire into our current life (via the Sun) we adapt our internal image of ourselves to include any new feelings and emotional content that this desire stimulates in us (Moon), and this completes the integration of the desire. The desire is now consciously active in our life and as it’s pursued new experience is generated, ideally from which we learn and grow.

However as we saw in the posts on Saturn, we never operate in a vacuum. In the current life - based on the life dynamics that have accumulated in the Soul over prior lifetimes - Saturn defines our overall psychological structure, and it is within this structure that all other conscious functions operate. Therefore if Saturn isn’t functioning healthily all the other conscious functions (e.g. Mercury, Venus etc.) suffer, are impaired to some extent in their functioning too. Additionally Saturn correlates to all forms: to matter itself (and thus time and space) and to all structures and patterns - social (values, beliefs, customs, norms, rules, laws and taboos of the culture we live in); personal (all expectations, obligations etc. from family, friends and others) and psychological (inhibitions, fears, and blocks). Life stops being so simple when we are subjected to all these things on a daily basis, all having the potential to compromise our natural response to life, and to mould us in certain ways, to condition us. So it’s very important that Saturn functions positively in our lives.

Positive functioning of Saturn includes physical self-preservation, being responsible, creating and managing goals, making correct judgements, and reflection leading to self-understanding. However due to emotional insecurity, another function Saturn is invariably involved in for most of us is the protection of the ego (Moon), which reflects the Cancer/Capricorn polarity. Therefore it creates a psychological casing around the ego through its defensive structuring of the body, emotions and mind, and this becomes our inner protection. Saturn correlates to the reality of the senses and so its functioning is conscious, yet because of this association it has with the Moon this inner protective functioning of Saturn often becomes deeply habit driven (Moon rules habits). A habit is a semi-conscious routine which means this protection of the ego that Saturn tries to create tends to become an automatic reaction, usually so much so that we lose consciousness of it – it then operates on “auto-pilot”. This now sets up a hidden dynamic within us that to varying extents limits our openness and controls our responses … subtlety suppressing anything that would require us to alter our self-image, our sense of our self, in an uncomfortable way. Thus the potential to learn from our experiences becomes diluted and restricted.

All psychological content supressed in this way is stored in our individual unconscious (Uranus) - along with all the desires selected by the Soul to be fulfilled in this life. And additionally there is a third kind of content in our unconscious – and that is all the distant events we have forgotten about in our current life, and memories of everything that has happened to us from all our past lives – all our long term, and ultra-long term memories. So there is more content (as images, pictures, emotions, psychological complexes etc.) in our unconscious than in our waking consciousness! It is so much more who we really are than our daily sense of who we are (our “I”), and so for most it naturally influences approximately 80% of all our waking behaviour. Our individual unconscious is a vast world of its own, and therefore a correspondingly huge amount of our energy is contained in it. All the energy trapped in our unconsciousness makes it unstable, and so consequently content is always trying to release itself into our consciousness. But because Saturn tries to encase our ego, our “I”, in a psychologically closed shell, to keep what we are conscious of limited to that which feels consistent - and thus safe and stable - very little content from our unconscious can be released in our normal waking state. Therefore normally it only happens when we dream at night, or when we daydream during the day, or when we are extremely over-tired, or when we meditate, or when our inhibitions are lessened (for example in therapy, or we have had too much to drink or taken drugs).

It is easy to see what a balancing act this all is. At the deepest most unconscious level we have the most torturous spiritual anguish inside us – what and who am I? - am I separate to everything or not? We also have the memories building up inside us, of everything that we have ever done or that has ever happened to us over countless prior lives. These memories have been instrumental in the selection of desires by the Soul for this life, now lying in seed form inside us waiting to be revealed via our instincts and then consciously integrated into our life. We also have our conscious sense of our self, our egocentric awareness of “I”, “me”, that we think and feel is all that we are - even if it seems somehow that a great deal is missing from this picture – with an on-going urge to keep this sense of self secure so that we can feel relaxed. Then obviously we have our basic physical needs of food, clothing and shelter to be met from within our environment, and beyond that we need to create situations that facilitate the pursuit of the desires we feel currently motivated by. All this must be done within the massive amount of social structuring that exists in the culture in which we live, which entails various levels of involvement with other people on an on-going basis, not just for practical reasons, but also for procreation and other activities, as part of our basic imperative to seek pleasure and happiness and avoid pain and unhappiness.

Each of us goes about managing this great balancing act called “our life” in our own way, in our own style, according to our individual makeup. So we create our “lifestyle” which reflects the way we have decided to balance all these aspects of our life for optimal functionality in a way that reflects us as an individual. This balancing of things from the depth of our unconscious to the most trivial of circumstances in our daily life to our total unknown future, all reflected symbolically in our lifestyle, correlates to Aquarius the water bearer - ruled by Uranus (the new), with Saturn as a secondary ruler. And Saturn (the past) is also the ruler of Capricorn. These two planets are diametrically opposed, and the intensity of such polarity and the fact that this polarity is occurring in each moment, is what creates the need for us to manage the resulting tension. And for most it is something that needs to be managed (otherwise madness would sooner or later overwhelm us) so we do - in each moment. Firstly through the Moon’s ability to inwardly anchor us in each moment through our self-image, our sense of being something constant, thus creating an inner focus from which we are emotionally present. We then further deal with this tension between the past and future in a more extended way through our daily and other functioning (shown by all the other planets except the Sun).

Additional to all this, constant movement and growth (Jupiter) is intrinsic to life. And as a result if it wasn’t for the constraining quality of Saturn our life would forever expand without limits (Jupiter) and eventually it would career out of control. So Saturn provides us with control and this allows us to stabilize. This is all well and good but what happens as a result depends on the choices we make.

If we balance the amount of control we create and impose in our life with an openness to moving in new ways – new ways of expressing ourselves, being open to consider new opportunities (Jupiter), an openness to experimenting and innovating (Uranus) with how we ourselves or our lives are structured (Saturn), then we will be better able to pursue the desires we need to in order to learn the lessons we came here to learn (Pluto). This in turn will create experiences that over time are likely to lead to the development, understanding, resolution and culmination we need, in whatever areas of life that we need it, to keep moving forward with new more meaningful and relevant desires and thus keep growing at a Soul level (Pluto). Learning our lessons is not always easy, but keeping our eyes on the goal that matters the most in any life always helps – the sign and house of the Pluto/Moon's NN conjunction if it exists in the chart, or otherwise of the PPP. If we have reached that in ourselves and expressed it in our life, whatever it is, when we die we can die in peace – we have achieved what we came to do. But letting go into the new (Uranus), naturally produces (sometimes very big) feelings of insecurity – to the extent that we step outside of our comfort zone, away from our current sense of self. And therefore it always creates a heightened sense of aliveness (because of the perceived danger), and it also can create excitement, great exhilaration and joy.

For many however the desire for security (Moon/Saturn) is such a strong force that it becomes difficult to moderate this pattern of controlling things in our lives and in ourselves, and over time it itself becomes out of control. This has the effect of sealing off everything in our unconscious, and then life cannot flow in us anymore - no movement or growth. As time passes we continue to gather life energy every day - through sunshine, air, water, food, exercise and sleep. Yet the structures (Saturn) we have put in place prevent this energy flowing into an expression in our life – it simply accumulates in our unconscious (Uranus) gathering in power (Pluto stagnation). As a result our life gradually becomes less colorful and inspiring, more grey and drab, and then gradually more dysfunctional as we become more and more miserable, and if nothing changes then eventually we may become depressed.

At this point if we at least spend our time meditatively, and/or reach out to family and friends or seek other kind of help, it may bring about the necessary reflection and understanding from which we can see our difficulties, repressions and blocks more clearly, and thus see what changes need to happen internally, externally (or both). And despite our fears, having this clarity may be enough for us to allow those changes to happen, or if necessary to actively bring those changes about. Once the energy in the unconscious is released, takes a new form, deep relief from the intense internal pressure of stagnation, conflict or pain occurs. As we process all the feelings and emotions released because of the change we can start rebuilding a new inner sense of our self, which will then become reflected in changes in our outer life. This choice is not one of totally resisting growth; rather it is leaving growth for as long as we can until we cannot sanely resist it anymore.

However if we continue on unendingly with total resistance to any movement or change, due to unrelenting attachment to the security of the past and the familiar (Moon), because of fear of anything unknown (Saturn), then at a key point a core Uranus function will be activated (the complete shattering of structures blocking Soul growth) and our unconscious will erupt producing a cataclysmic event in our lives. This will result in immediate and usually massive change, an enormous release of energy from past forms, an explosion of the new into being. The utter shock (Uranus) usually means we cannot process the complex entanglement of thoughts, feelings and emotions brought into play. It can also shatter the sense we have of ourselves so badly, that we may never fully recover it, and thus in rare cases possibly leading to mental illness of some kind. Even in the average scenario, all this will naturally create really deep, intense on-going trauma (Uranus), which itself may be too painful and overwhelming to fully experience, in which case we will have no choice but to suppress it (Saturn). Paradoxically, this itself will be pushing fresh material back down into the basement of our mind, out of conscious reach again (Uranus).

There are different kinds of trauma (Uranus). For instance there is individual trauma which can be personal (as above) or impersonal (e.g. losing a loved one in an earthquake), and there is group trauma (e.g. a race or social group being persecuted). Regardless of the kind of trauma, if an experience is traumatic (too threatening, distressing, painful or terrifying to cope with at the time it occurs) some or all of that experience will be suppressed (Saturn) - pushed unprocessed into the unconscious and thus hidden and immobilised (Uranus).

Usually, in fact, suppressed psychological material is being added to the unconscious on an ongoing basis. Some material keeps accumulating all the time – this is our long term memories (including memories of all our traumas, even after the traumas themselves have been healed). Plus for example, regarding the cataclysmic change/eruption in one’s life described above resulting in a clearing out of much unconscious content - the trauma arising from all these changes (which are necessary and good in themselves) may so easily become new material that is freshly suppressed. But material can also come from other kinds of trauma, plus greater or lesser suppression of general items of personal experience on a continuing basis. And all this causes pressure in the unconscious to start rebuilding anew. And sooner or later it will have to be released again in a way similar to one of the example response/reaction scenarios above.

This circular process - of continued suppression leading to the concentration of the unconscious material leading to an intensification of the need for change, leading to either gradual change or cataclysmic breakthrough, and therefore new life … followed by new experiences, some requiring new suppressions … leading to the whole process repeating itself again .. and again, and again over many lifetimes, gradually causes great weariness to develop at a Soul level. It is in the repetitive nature of this process (resulting in the endless wheel of life and death) that we get trapped. So why do we do this? And what can break the cycle?

We do this because of fear. Some of our fears are built in and natural, for example the fear of not having physical safety. But other fears are not natural and are the result of the patriarchy, for example the fear of isolation. Examples of things that can cause us to change are frustration or despair. When frustration hits a peak or when everything seems absolutely hopeless it can dawn on us that we really need help, and that can aid us to look from a different space – one that is more open to making changes. And as part of that we reach out to others. Another thing is pain, and it comes in many forms – for example physical, emotional, and psychological. Of course we have many ways of suppressing pain too, but such deadening of our system eventually becomes its own form of pain. At some point pain can become so much that we are willing to do anything to be free from it. Pain thus draws us to ask “why” more intensely, more deeply than we ever have before. “Why” asked like this is a Pluto (Soul) questioning. The fire of our enquiry into the cause and healing of our pain can stimulate us to detach from our emotions, which gives us distance from our motivations, and thus from our desires, and this can lead to a deep penetration of the reality of our life and our self. In this position we can start to see our life more objectively, and then real insight into our life and our self can take place – and this glimpse of freedom is exceptionally liberating (Uranus). Gradually the “aha” moments become more frequent, and so many things about our self and our life start making much more sense – sometimes the shock (Uranus) of it all can cause deep laughter to erupt!

It is one thing to be trapped in life – but to not understand why can be its own additional kind of prison (Saturn). And when, through detachment, we can see our life and our self in it much more objectively (Uranus), it also becomes possible to start glimpsing our self at the actual Soul level more clearly, and then to start sensing our own core Soul dynamics. At this point true liberation from ignorance is beginning – and we can paradoxically (Uranus) feel more in control of our self than we have ever been our whole life, yet have less desire to have control. The winds of freedom (Uranus) smell sweet as well as wild - when we are finally able to be aware of ourselves as a Soul, and not just through the emotionally-based egocentric sense we have of ourselves. The Soul may be hidden deep within us, but through Uranus we can receive its messages, we can have very revealing glimpses of it, and over time can gravitate our waking consciousness to it. After all, it is simply our actual true Self.

The leap from Saturn to Uranus is a very difficult leap to take. That is why approximately 70% of any society is always in a Consensus state (ruled by Saturn) with a much smaller proportion individuating (Uranus) away from that consensus reality. Many issues regarding making the leap from Saturn to Uranus are the realm of Chiron, which orbits between Saturn and Uranus.

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Next, Uranus in the chart of Darwin … (and since this thread is very long attached chart graphics for convenience)

IntroductionWe started this method by looking at the nature of Darwin’s Soul – what it’s immediate past intentions have been (Pluto), and how it attempted to fulfil those (Moon SN), where that has got the Soul immediately prior to coming into this life (Pluto) - and what it’s intentions for this life are (Pluto Polarity Point - PPP) and how it will attempt to fulfil those intentions (Moon NN). Along the way we have also looked much further back into the Soul’s past via the SN of Pluto and all its implications.

From Ancient suffering …As we know, in those very, very distant past lives Darwin’s Soul had endured great hardship and trauma, including massive survival struggles. In those lives the Soul accumulated many wounds from it’s struggles to survive that progressively weakened its self-esteem and spirit - Pluto SN (distant past lives) and Saturn SN (efforts, obstacles in those lives) in Capricorn (suppression) in the 2nd house (survival, self-esteem) square (tension, resistance, blockage) Chiron SN (wounding) in Aries (of self, spirit) in the 4th house (emotions). This was when suppression of the emotional body started.

To the PresentWe saw though how it eventually broke away from these kinds of lives, to many other lives which resulted in much reorientation within itself and to society in general. This then led to a series of more recent lives where it has been close to nature, being in it and observing it; at the same time having a very keen interest in developing the intellect which it simultaneously did. Throughout all these lives the Soul has naturally been growing in consciousness, and the more recent past lives have been individuating lives, so that by the time the Soul has incarnated as Darwin it was already a long way into the 3rd individuated stage (Uranus based). And now in this life the Soul’s intentions are to culminate all this long history of struggle on a consensus level and growth as an individual, and to finally complete the Soul’s shift from predominately using intellect to using intuition instead, from left brain to right - permanently (Pluto in 3rd house, PPP in 9th).

Everything starts with DesireThe Soul’s intentions for our life are held in the unconscious (Uranus) and thus we usually have little direct knowledge of them until they arise within us as specific desires. In the early part of his life three main desires would have arisen for Darwin – firstly exploring (fire signs) nature (Sagittarius/Pisces/Taurus) and secondly developing his mind (Gemini/Sagittarius/Virgo). For these first two desires, this is because these are stemming originally from his Pluto location, and encompass so much of his chart.

Desire to explore nature - stellium in Pisces including Pluto, ruler of stellium in Sagittarius, Sagittarius ASC, Jupiter conjunct Pluto, SN Moon in Taurus 5th with ruler in Aries 3rd, Leo on the 9th house cusp where the PPP is).

The third desire to arise would have been to tap into the collective thinking of his society, and as well on a personal level find cures for his pain afflicted body - Chiron in Aquarius in the 2nd house square the nodal axis in the 5th and 11th houses (skipped step).

Darwin’s desires are few, old and complexAs we have seen in previous posts and mentioned above, exploring nature and using the mind were nothing new to the Soul. For instance these were the only things the Soul was doing in its last life as William Dampier – nothing else. And that Darwin chose to continue doing these things in his life was exactly right in terms of fulfilling his karmic requirements. This is because the Soul has been attempting to reach the PPP in Virgo 9th experience for many, many lifetimes now - in fact it has done so several times already. We know this because of the skipped step (Chiron) which means he has not learnt all the lessons involved in his SN Moon house, sign and aspects. Instead, because of the trauma he has experienced in the past, he has tried to take shortcuts with learning his Soul lessons in the way required by the Soul, by jumping from the Moon SN to the Moon NN before having completed learning all that needed to be learnt at the Moon SN. And in doing this he has automatically opened up the PPP area of experience, which usually is naturally stimulated whenever the Moon’s NN is activated. However such shortcuts with evolutionary necessity only work temporarily and he has had to revert back. This cycle would have occurred many times over many lives – we can see this because the PPP is in the natural Sagittarius house, which is naturally ruled by Jupiter, and Jupiter is in a new conjunction to Pluto. But why does this show that, and indeed how would this have happened? It would probably be worthwhile to find out, as in the process we may find some clues as to why Darwin has Uranus in Scorpio in the 11th.

Necessity is the mother of invention Firstly, the Soul has had many recent lives now of trying it’s utmost to figure out what makes nature tick - because of its love for nature and also because how nature worked seemed to be so compellingly mysterious, fascinating, and also because of the Soul’s extreme attachments to using the mental body … and in this life as Darwin it must finalise this deep and long standing behaviour - Mercury (thinking) balsamic (been going a long time) Pluto (being total, compulsion) both in Pisces (about the entire creation including nature) in 3rd (note-taking, study, local environments) with the ruler Neptune (mystery, devotion) conjunct Saturn (work, achievement) in Sagittarius (seeking understanding) in 12th (need to culminate many lives) …. of worldly effort (Saturn). This was not always what the Soul has wanted to do however, it has arisen as its individual quest, its passion that it has developed as a reaction to so many ancient lives of suffering and trauma. All the soul-destroying suffering that this Soul went through in all it’s distant past lives has consequently birthed an extremely deep need to understand why life is what it is … and many, many lifetimes later this quest has now become the Soul’s whole “reason for being”.

Birth of a new QuestReferring back to those very distant lives summarised at the beginning of the post, we know the quest itself would have been born in the depths of despair the Soul found itself in at some point, most likely in its last lives in the Consensus stage. It would have been this deep question about its suffering that was racking the Soul so much, the absolute agony that this question was based on, that gave the Soul such an idea regarding what it could do about its suffering. After probably gestating for a life or two this idea would have spawned the beginning of the Soul’s defiant impulse in distant lives (Uranus SN and Mars SN in 1st house Sagittarius) to actually branch out on its own and start thinking for itself. And so this question, born out of suffering, mutates into the Soul’s new quest, a new direction for it – an initial spur away from the mainstream.

Individuation – progress is slow and difficultHowever, as one might imagine, this has not always been a straight-forward process. Initial difficulties would have been great frustration at lack of progress (both Mars SN and Uranus SN square Jupiter, expansion - and Jupiter is in a full quincunx, social limitations, to Mars in the 10th, goals) – practically whole lifetimes would have been stuck in a quagmire with no progress being made as the Soul dealt with authorities and authority issues. While the Soul would have been dealt many additional blows to its self- esteem by this (Mars square, crisis, Moon in 2nd, self-worth) it would have absolutely needed to keep pushing against all constrictions regardless, to keep the movement into individuation continuing. Other difficulties at that time would have been learning how to get what it needed from the society while at the same time wanting to get out from under it’s influence (both Mars SN and Uranus SN square, crisis, Pluto, and Pluto is in full sesquiquadrate, understanding society, to Mars in 10th) … again resulting in struggle, hurt and powerlessness within the system (Mars squaring Moon in Capricorn, and Moon rules the 8th house, power & powerlessness). In the process of struggling to break free, all these woundings have been dismissed as unimportant - thus the wounding would have been swept aside so that deeper needs would continue to be met. The newly discovered need for liberation and freedom (Mars SN new conjunction to Uranus SN in Sagittarius in the 1st house) would have been viewed as paramount and anything that might detract from it as immaterial.

Loss and FrustrationDuring the resulting standoff of these lives, either enforced by society or because the related inner conflicts made it impossible to do anything significant, all the previous hard work of the Soul (to study nature, using the mind) would languish, and before long start dissolving (Jupiter, ruler of the Uranus & Mars SNs in Sag, is itself ruled by Neptune in the 12th, both a dissolvent). This is where deep frustration would set in regarding these desires (Saturn is conjuncting Jupiter’s ruler, Neptune), which would itself have been wounding to the individual’s willpower.

Recent LivesMuch later on in the Soul’s recent past lives, we can see the outcome of all this, the result of the emotional body suppression and the damage to its self-esteem, which started such a very long time ago, and then subsequent wounding to it’s willpower. With the Moon SN being in the 5th house (willpower, creativity) – ego distortion has resulted in the Soul creating a pyramid effect in its relating. The Soul has either been at the bottom or at the top of this pyramid. Wherever it was, with the SN Moon in Taurus (fixed sign) it would have been stuck there for long periods at a time; most reluctantly if at the bottom or most obstinately if it was at the top. It would have tended to be at the top (Moon SN ruler is in Aries) but not always. In these more recent past lives, along with this pyramid structure that the Soul has created would have been a lot of “attitude” as far as authorities went (the ruler, of the Moon SN ruler, is Mars in 10th house), in fact with everyone in its life at times (Mars in Libra, extremes). Just as it was in distant past lives the Soul has in more recent past lives still had issues it was working out with society and authorities. (For example, in the immediate past life, while Dampier preferred to avoid dealing with authority, when he did have to he still had a cavalier approach to it).

… Problems at the South NodeThis ego (Cancer, emotional) distortion would have been building over many, many distant lives as a result of the emotional suppression happening over the same long period. In more recent lives now, without contact with its emotional body, the Soul would have had few reality checks on the sense it had of itself. Motivated and operating more and more from a mental perspective for a long time now, the distortion that is inevitable with suppression (Saturn) has affected the egocentric awareness (Moon) in recent lives resulting in a sense of grandeur - hence the pyramid creation (Moon SN in 5th house). In each recent life, as long as the personality was at the top of the pyramid that it had created it would be happy. But because it was operating with a massively suppressed emotional body, at times the individual would lose perspective completely as far as its sense of grandeur went, a huge crisis would erupt, and in a short space of time it would find it was at the bottom of it’s pyramid (Moon SN is at the apex of a yod with Neptune/Saturn and the MC). Nevertheless with the Moon SN septile Pluto (feeling special) and Moon SN ruler being in Aries 3rd, ruled by Mars in the 10th, the individual would simply start rebuilding it’s ego to great heights again. Only for the same thing to happen again. Every time the individual got dumped by society this way it’s disillusionment with itself would have become greater and greater (Neptune is one of the points in the yod).

Creation of the Skipped StepSo eventually the Soul would abandon the learning these desires required (SN in 5th house learning) and attempt a miraculous jump to the completely opposite kind of experience – the 11th house, the area of experience denoted by the Moon NN). This is only ever initially attempted by a Soul when it has become desperate, when the difficulties it has been facing in the Pluto and SN Moon areas have seemed insurmountable. That’s because it’s simply not natural to try and grab the future even if it is possible. It’s natural to stay in the present, but if the present becomes too unpalatable because it itself is stuck in a past which has been hell then the future becomes the only option. Initially this brings a great sense of relief, especially as the area of the PPP also now seems to be available in a more tangible way – a great exhilaration can be felt, a feeling of astonishing breakthrough. However having to continue developing life experience, but suddenly now in this new area, may start off as extremely refreshing, it will still have all the challenges that something untried and new has. Therefore eventually progress here will slow too, and life will gradually become de-glamorized and bogged down with difficulties. And these difficulties will be compounded by the fact that the foundation for this area of experience (the 5th house) is incomplete and therefore unreliable, may not always support the kind of learning that occurs in the 11th house in the way expected. This would lead to the personality not being able to fully rely upon itself in all situations as far as the 11th house was concerned. As things degenerate to be so difficult that doing things this way becomes unworkable as a solution, the Soul will abandon it and return to the original way of operating - the 5th house way. And naturally it will be with a significant sense of disappointment and resignation (Saturn experiences).

Soul Growth becoming FragmentedBack at the 5th house again the Soul would feel so much less inspired (Moon SN quincunx Neptune) and would be more depressed (Moon SN quincunx Saturn). Automatically resurrecting its old pyramid pattern starting with itself at the top would work for a while, but the same disillusionment would set in as it continuously ended up being thrown down to the bottom by others in more powerful positions in society, people it was trying to dominate, or at the very least, to impress. So again it would escape by jumping to the Moon NN in the 11th house. Each time it has jumped to the 11th house however the experience has not been so new, and gradually the Soul would have started to develop in that area of experience – detachment, observation etc. (11th). As well, being in Scorpio, this new learning would be very different to its 5th house experiences. Instead of being based on withdrawal into pleasure (Taurus in 5th) there would be more openness to penetrating all that the individual found themselves involved with, including themselves, and a desire to expand what and who they were able to relate to. This would inevitably take them into emotional conflicts with others (Scorpio) which would rock them to the core, as having such little access to their emotions they would not be able to prevent being outmanoeuvred and defeated in these confrontations, which were mostly emotional in nature. However the individual would gradually become aware that it did actually have emotions, and a desire to be able to access them fully would have arisen via Mars (in the 10th, from where all the agitation was taking place).

New HorizonsIn each life as this cycle played out, whenever the individual was in the Moon NN 11th house area of experience a couple of things would happen. Being in the 11th the individual would start experimenting (11th) with its environment, and with how it observed it. This would then stimulate awareness of the PPP experience – Virgo 9th. And here the individual would find detailed insights happening of their own accord, a kind of natural distinguishing of environmental data relevance and significant patterns in the data. These would be delicious tastes of exhilaration which would encourage the individual to abandon the past and observe in many new directions, loosening the mind from its previous patterns. Also as a result the individual would have not been able to avoid noticing the rigidity of its responses to others (the 11th being a fixed house), and been drawn into experimenting in scientific fashion (11th) with its own behavior at deeper levels (Scorpio). But with the Moon NN being ruled by Pluto the urge for security would at some point manifest, and the individual would then shut-down and once again be forced to revert back to the Moon SN in the 5th. Nonetheless this regular see-saw flip-flopping over the most recent lives has had three very interesting effects.

Wounding, Suppression and Karmic NecessityFirstly, by the time the Soul has incarnated as Darwin Chiron is in Aquarius for many reasons – it correlates to the many lifetimes the Soul has been relying predominately on its mental body in its daily living, and thus the extensive mental development that has eventually produced the potential to interact directly with the collective mind (Aquarius is an air sign and relates to the collective); but at the same time it relates to the deficiency the Soul has felt when interacting face to face in group activity due to its suppressed emotional body; and related to these social difficulties, its battles with authorities and the resulting broken willpower, and the loss of objectivity that has led to the distorted ego that has emerged in recent lives. Another aspect of Chiron being in Aquarius shows the extensive trauma (Aquarius) all the many wounds (Chiron) have created for the Soul. Finally, it echoes the endlessly thwarted desire for freedom. Chiron in the 2nd relates to the deeply buried pain from struggles to survive that have plagued this Soul so much; it reveals a shattered value system and the distrust the Soul has developed about the body (it occasionally failed Dampier completely at random moments); and it indicates that sickness may occur in his physical body (2nd) as the Soul tries to heal the emotional trauma. But more than anything else Chiron in the 2nd reflects its massively wounded self-worth – its greatest ongoing wound.

Disturbing the deeply buried emotional body, as described above, has gradually refreshed the Soul’s awareness of the hugely unresolved wounds it has accumulated over, and been carrying for, so many lifetimes. In very recent lives, glimpses would have been had through the PPP into how these wounds were at the bottom of ego distortion, and then how that itself was at the bottom of not being able to progress in society. And so now in the life of Darwin we see the healing of all those issues brought forward as a “must happen” life mission, in the form of the skipped step.

Grabbing the Future … until you fallSecondly, the Soul would also have needed to identify some limitation within itself that it needed to go beyond (Moon NN in Scorpio) and then form a relationship to something that symbolized whatever was beyond that. This limitation would have been … firstly its propensity to always arrange its perceptions logically (Pluto is the ruler of the Moon’s NN, and Mercury is in a balsamic conjunction to Pluto in the 3rd) but secondly, to also do so in a way that always fitted a pre-defined pattern (Mercury in FQ square to Saturn). That pre-defined pattern would be the individual’s set of existing concepts concerning what reality was (Pluto in the 3rd), which the individual would be deeply attached to for emotional security (Pluto) … And what would be beyond it would be having a Sagittarian understanding of what reality was about, instead of a logical arrangement of many fragments of perceived reality. A broad overview of the total reality of any matter, and thus a connection to the inherent principles of it rather than only the detailed facts of it, which may change over time as perceptions change.

What would have symbolized such a solution, would have been a rationally integrated insight into all of it’s detached observations of the environment, of nature, of the group social structures (Moon NN in 11th), and of its own inner states, of its needs for the healing of it’s emotional body (Scorpio), and deep resolution of the wounding to its self-esteem (Chiron in 2nd, square to the nodal axis) from an intuitive grasp of all the essential issues involved. And amazingly enough (to the personality) it was possible to actually find this solution - at the PPP in Virgo in the 9th house. By predominately focusing on and operating through 11th house Scorpio situations and issues as a by-product the PPP location would also have been opened and made available to consciousness. These additional PPP 9th house experience would have had the effect of propelling the Soul even more into its future than it already had done by jumping to the Moon NN prematurely. Therefore even though this totally premature 9th house experience would have been greatly replenishing for the Soul, it would have been only able to participate for bursts before it would be unable to prevent falling back to the 11th house, and then eventually back to the 5th. Falling from such heights (PPP in 9th) would have been extremely dramatic (Moon SN 5th), each time involving many external and internal conflicts and trauma of its own. However each time the Soul returned it would bring its increased understanding with it, its expanded mind, its increased intuitive abilities, all counteracting the tendency to create and rely solely on pre-determined patterns of understanding.

Not All is LostNow we can see how it occurred that the Soul reached to its PPP several times in the past. Also that Darwin has Jupiter in a new conjunction to Pluto shows that in these recent lives the Soul actually did overcome the limitation it had identified as blocking its evolution the most – the imposition of logic onto all perceptions in a pre-determined pattern. Thus Jupiter is now able to balance out the effect of Mercury being in a balsamic conjunction to Pluto. Jupiter will do this by being able to take Mercury’s logical output (deepened by Pluto) as its own input, and synthesize it into an integrated concept, a whole understanding. And be able to immediately see if any inherent pattern in those concepts is identical to any pattern already known, or whether this understanding is based on an entirely new pattern (innovation drawn from those previous life experiences in the 11th house half of the flip-flopping cycle). The ability to do this would prove invaluable in Darwin’s endless experiments, all of which had to be recorded meticulously in great detail (Mercury square Saturn), with the resulting data extensively analysed (Mercury conjunct Pluto) and reduced to a summarised result, to something that was significant in the big picture (Jupiter conjunct Pluto).

Finally a BreakthroughA third effect of all this past life flip-flopping between the Moon SN and NN is that this itself has been somewhat traumatising for the Soul. As well, when on the NN polarity, the tip of the unresolved trauma from all of its past lives (Uranus & 11th, long term memories) was gradually being exposed through emotional encounters with people having very different opinions and views to it (Scorpio, ruled by Pluto in 3rd). These two things plus the stress of not easily fitting (lack of emotional & social skills/responses) into any groups (11th) combined with the need to liberate from co-dependent one-to- one relationships (Libra on 11th house cusp) would have meant the individual was always extremely lonely in this half of the nodal flip-flopping cycle. In fact this Soul has rarely known true friendship (11th) for a great deal of its recent past. Of course there would have been the odd exception, but it has been severely limited by its suppressed emotions and it’s unlikely its relationships often flowered into much intimacy with another, be it with family, friend or lover. Yet with the Moon NN in Scorpio the desire for deep, meaningful relationships with others would have been constantly growing in the background. Thus additional 11th house experiences for the individual would involve facing its inherent loneliness at a social level. With all these trauma-based experiences happening for the Soul in the NN half the cycle in recent lives, it is clear why Uranus is in the 11th house in Darwin’s chart - it links to the massive trauma and deep isolation the Soul carries within it, which in recent lives has started to be released from the unconscious. It is also why Uranus is in a conjunction to the Moon’s NN, showing the Soul has been starting to face and release its trauma in this way in just the last life or two. This was also why Uranus is in Scorpio – Scorpio has very recently been the catalyst to open the basement door, and the Soul needs that to continue in this life.

… and Immense Liberation is at handWith Uranus here in the 11th house (the house of trauma) Darwin will have as much access as possible to the entire past trauma of the Soul, as it has started to have in very recent lives. The conjunction to the Moon NN being new shows that liberation from this trauma had already started to take place previously, as a result of new decisions and choices that had been gestating or active in the Soul. And due to this past activation of the NN, it will now be a point of healthy growth for the Soul in Darwin’s life, so he should continue to focus and be active here. It also indicates the Soul’s intentions in this life to continue to make innovative new decisions and choices regarding the processing of old trauma, and the experiencing of any new trauma.

Putting it all to Good UseNot only that, it also means that Darwin should identify a socially (11th) relevant (10th) need to pour his life energies into. It was absolutely imperative that he move on from the approach of Dampier (whose life efforts, being a pirate, were generally very disconnected from society). Instead Darwin needed to integrate his worldly efforts into society in no uncertain terms - his light (Uranus) must shine amongst his peers (11th) this time. Thus he focused on his local universities and scientific societies as target groups he knew he had to become acknowledged by, and more importantly, relevant to and thus integrated with. Thus another reason why Uranus was in the 11th house in Scorpio was the need to continue the penetration (Scorpio) of society (11th) he had embarked on in recent lives, and that he should figure out the source of any resistance in society to his aims (Uranus sesquiquadrate Jupiter in 3rd) by psychoanalysing the human dynamics involved (Uranus in Scorpio), as a way of overcoming any obstacle to integrating into any scientific community that he needed to, for the purpose of gaining enhanced influence and respectability that would assist his mental work effort (Uranus in Scorpio 11th in FQ trine with Mercury, which was conjunct Pluto and square Saturn).

Another essential reason why Uranus was in the 11th house was to promote objectivity, and the detachment that this requires, as this is at the heart of the scientific enquiry, all scientific method. That Darwin wrote some of his best work in Origin of the Species when he was his sickest shows how much he had the ability to detach from any emotions or distractions to do with his external and internal environments, and just be present with what was actually happening on a momentary basis – pure observation. At the same time, as an observer he needed to be able to merge totally with what was being observed, another reason for Uranus being in Scorpio (merging, osmosis).

Following the Path of LiberationPersonal relationships are in the Soul’s future path to liberation, and this would impinge on Darwin’s consciousness in this life (Uranus NN in Gemini in the 7th house). Thus Darwin would innately sense that he needed to always find a way to be on a positive pathway in his dealings with people. Nevertheless, with Uranus NN quincunxing natal Uranus (which was in a stationary retrograde position - extra emphasised individuality) there would be a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) tension in his scientifically based relationships until he had clarified whether or not the other person would acknowledge, understand and therefore accept his need for freedom (Uranus in 11th) as far as mental exploration and scientific endeavour was concerned (natal Uranus trines Mercury in the 3rd, which is in a FQ square to Saturn in Sagittarius – crisis, square, freedom based on being able to implement his own, FQ, scientific approach and style). And at the same time he still needed to retain their respect – without that he was sunk. Also the reason this tension would sometimes not be so subtle was that Uranus NN was tightly square to Mercury, Ceres and Pluto, opposite Neptune and Saturn, and sesquiquadrate Mars. However it also meant he needed to let other people into his scientific process (quincunx = humility, adjustments), that he needed to be exposed to many different opinions (Gemini) from a great variety of people, in order to truly liberate from his own scientific fixity (Uranus in a fixed sign and house), and through comparison (7th) to gain increased objectivity. The Soul has suffered enough that its understanding of cause and effect is now an established part of itself on a personal level, and he was now extending that to an impersonal level (all the Aquarius, Uranus and the 11th house in the chart). So because of all these conflicting needs Darwin therefore spent a lot of time and energy in correspondence with his colleagues patiently and carefully working through all these issues, plus conscientiously wrote articles for the scientific community also in order to stay connected despite his natural instinct from the past to “go it alone” (Moon SN in 5th, ruler in Aries).

The Thirst for Innovation and the NewThis life for Darwin was all about a culmination of and great release from the past, via a focus on the present that was uncompromisingly total and potent. The enormity of the challenge he set himself, to penetrate the mystery of biological species creation and change, once established in him burned in him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it took priority over absolutely everything else in his life. In the past he had already been a wild individual, and was unique in his sea travels. But relative to that past Darwin’s whole life now represented the new, because he had jumped in to doing all that, and more, within the context of full integration into society. This was a radical development for the Soul, a kind of full circle stretching back from ancient Consensus days. Here Darwin was again relating to society as a closely knit member of it as then, but not this time from a point of impoverishment, unlawfulness, or other kind of social suffering. Instead this was close involvement as one who was laden with a great gift that society sorely needed, and whose time had come.

This is expressed in so many ways in Darwin’s chart. Uranus is in a disseminating bi-septile to the Sun in Aquarius, bringing clarity to Darwin’s socialising efforts regarding his scientific progress. This would particularly be the case say for example, when obtaining an unusual result from an experiment (Uranus in 11th). This would prompt Darwin to seek out the right person or people to discuss this new finding with, someone who could help him gauge the effect it might have on the wider scientific society. And in this way fate steered him in the right direction regarding social events many times.

While the Moon in Capricorn in the 2nd would have had a braking effect on the Uranus energy in his life, it would have been a lone figure in this regard. At the most it would have provided a much needed rudder in a life of heightened individualism (Uranus), also perhaps an anchoring effect by keeping excitement in check. But otherwise it too was on the same journey as it was in a crescent quintile to Uranus. For example, Darwin would have spent much time on his walks in nature gestating (Moon) new ideas (Uranus) into clearer form (Capricorn) by pondering over his feelings, or creatively (quintile) planning his next moves (Capricorn) in the community (11th).

With Mercury in a FQ trine to Uranus, his confidence in his mental abilities was super high. His hunger for new hypotheses to evaluate, for new experiments to construct, for results to try and understand was rarely satiated. With his brilliance being difficult to match and his left brain being wired so effortlessly into the collective mind, he was many steps ahead in intelligence of most others of his time. Those espousing old and dead ideas or concepts, or unrealistic theories were left in the dust as he voraciously raced ahead in understanding like a super seasoned chess player. And after he’d written his book and it had been critiqued many times, it slowly dawned on him that only a few people understood what it was really about – it was so new and profound.

With Venus in a gibbous quincunx to Uranus Darwin knew he had to be on his best behaviour at all times. In his early youth before he consciously acknowledged his desire for natural science, he only felt like amusing himself as he saw fit. But once he got closer to doing the kind of science he was passionate about he quickly fell in line with expected social etiquette. He knew which side his bread was buttered on and what was at stake. He was so determined to culminate his intense mental searching for many lives he instinctively (Venus in Aries) knew humbling (quincunx) himself was a small price to pay for a much deeper liberation.

Because Uranus was on the Moon NN, pulling him to continue there in this life, and that Moon's NN was the resolution node for the Chiron skipped step, beyond the age of 28 Darwin would have had little inclination to be at the Moon SN at all in this life. This was extra emphasised by Uranus being the ruler of Chiron, and also Chiron's NN being conjunct both the Moon's NN and Uranus, all in Scorpio in the 11th house - almost zero reason. And with Saturn in a full quincunx to the Moon SN any social indiscretions would quickly result in undesirable repercussions, so the lesson would be learnt soon enough. Darwin did have a few crises to deal with in his life, but nothing that had any permanent affect. The potential for repression of any stress this caused was also there, especially with Saturn in the 12th. But with Uranus conjunct the Moon NN, and Uranus also in a disseminating trine to Pluto, Darwin was in control of his destiny (liberation) as far as social integration was concerned, due to the essential humbleness that he was now fully able to command from deep within.

Uranus was in Scorpio to bring the light to the scientific darkness of those times, and this was achieved by its ruler, Pluto in the 3rd, finally undergoing a complete transformation, a metamorphosis to the PPP in the 9th, once and for all. To finally get to this place Darwin had to resolve an enormous amount of karma, and personal trauma, by dedicating his entire adult life to the task of helping humanity through his chosen field. But in so doing, he also brought himself to a point (PPP) where a refined and uncluttered awareness of his Soul (Pluto) was possible. And to reach that point is freedom, truly liberating.

First, thanks to you all for continuing to take the time necessary to work on this next to last segment of our planetary method: Uranus.

I am planning on reading through all of your work over the weekend. I am still having some sickness in the body that is not allowing me to concentrate in the ways that I want too to read through your works. I am hopeful that by Monday I will be able to post my responses to all of you.